


My Heart Was Starving All The While (You Made It Wait)

by fmo



Series: Judgment AU (Tarot Card) [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Captain America: The First Avenger, F/M, M/M, Magical Realism, Multi, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Relationship Study, Tarot Cards, it's hardly even a flirtation between peggy and bucky but whatever, judgment au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 15:49:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5169512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's in the hospital again, injured, and Barnes hasn't left his side all day. So, while Steve sleeps, Peggy asks Barnes to have dinner with her. She wants to get to know the man Steve would have walked to Austria for. </p><p>In the end, she learns much more than she'd expected.</p><p> </p><p>[By popular request, this is another story in my magical realism tarot card AU 'verse (prior reading not required), where everyone is connected with a certain tarot card that explains who they really are:</p><p>"When you're little, they'll ask you to choose a card from a spread of the Major Arcana: 22 Tarot cards, all face-down. The one you choose is the same one you'll choose all your life: it's the card that dictates your personality, your fate, the struggles and strengths of your identity and your life."]</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Heart Was Starving All The While (You Made It Wait)

**Author's Note:**

> You might find it interesting to read "Steve Rogers Was Judgment" before this, but you don't have to.

Originally, someone tried to put up a privacy screen to separate Steve’s bed from the rest of the beds in the officers’ ward. Unsurprisingly, as soon as Steve woke up even for a moment, he insisted that it be taken down.

The division remains, though. While the seriousness of injury among the other men varies, all of them look hurt, hungry, tired. War and its cruelties are stamped all over them. Steve, on the other hand, is Snow White among them: he’s lost in that deep, peaceful sleep that takes him while his injuries repair themselves at an impossible pace. It must be an effect of the serum, Peggy and Howard think: a kind of dormant state to keep him safe from pain or put him at rest while his body burns its energies in healing. Even now, with a yellowing black eye, Steve looks healthy in a way no other man here does.

Especially not the man next to him.

As always, Sergeant Barnes is sitting by Steve’s sickbed: coat hanging on the back of the chair, shirtsleeves rolled up, legs stretched out in front of him, a tattered book open on his lap _._ The only funny thing is that, as Peggy watches him from the doorway, Barnes doesn’t turn the pages at all.

Barnes does that, sometimes. Stares, and Peggy doesn’t know what thoughts are behind his sharp and rather lovely eyes. She’s spoken to him often, yet she doesn’t know the man. The hinge of their relationship is there, dreaming in the bed by Barnes’ hip.

To Peggy, Barnes is a composite picture, made up of the stories Steve tells (which don’t seem to fit with the man she sees) and the little grains of intelligence she gathers about him as their lives meet, day by day.

She knows that when they’re discussing strategy or intelligence, Barnes always argues for the plan that’s least risky for Steve (which of course is always the plan Steve likes least). She has noticed that when Steve is worried or weighed down with responsibility, Barnes is always there to rib Steve or crack a joke that makes Steve duck his head or laugh or rib Barnes in return. When Steve’s not around or not looking, though, Barnes is a statue, all his animation gone, like a mirror Galatea.

She’s seen that, while Steve glares at photographs of Johann Schmidt or other Hydra leaders, Barnes prefers not to look at them at all. Barnes drinks steadily, probably too much, but keeps it up at the same rate no matter whether the Commandos are raucously celebrating a great, glorious victory or whether they are not at the bar with him at all. He always has a light sweat on his brow, even in a cool room. His uniform is never quite neat.

This is the most important thing she knows: Barnes was offered an honorable discharge after his time as a prisoner of war, but he chose to stay. He still chooses to stay; to risk his life; to kill. He chooses to fight in spite of the fact that he doesn’t celebrate when he wins.

Peggy would bet her last pair of silk stockings that, if Steve Rogers were to go home to Brooklyn tomorrow morning, Barnes would go with him in the same instant, dropping his rifle and uniform and medals on the ground as he went.

Steve is not going home, though, so Barnes remains his shadow, even here in the hospital.  It’s not the first time: Steve gets hurt; Steve is bandaged up in a hospital or in a field or in a stranger’s living room; Steve sleeps; Barnes sits next to him, not reading a book. The next day, Steve’s bright and eager to return to the fray.

At least this time there’s no bottle by Barnes’ feet.

Peggy most likely isn’t allowed in the ward here, but being SSR means that the rules might not apply to you, and Peggy’s always taken advantage of that. So she steps into the ward, passes by the beds of moaning or sleeping or staring or chit-chatting men, stops by the foot of Steve’s bed.

As he lies on his back under the tidy sheets and blankets, Steve’s big chest is moving so slightly, but steadily—in and out, deep breaths. A few strands of his hair fall forward sweetly, just a little, to touch his forehead. Even with broken bones, he looks so vital and beautiful, as though the serum’s health is illuminating him from inside. Or perhaps it’s just his goodness that does that.

As always, Steve looks so placid while he’s sleeping off his hurts. Perhaps for Steve’s sleeping mind it’s all so simple and familiar, being here like this. Perhaps he knows Barnes is at his side. He’s spoken of how he was ill sometimes as a child; he says Barnes was always with him then, too.

Barnes himself, still absorbed in a single page of his book, doesn’t even notice Peggy’s presence a few feet from him until she clears her throat and asks, softly: “Has he woken again?”

Barnes glances up and then stands up in deference—to her femininity or her rank or both, she’s never quite certain. “They got him up at about two to ask him how he felt, change his bandages,” Barnes says. “Soon as they left, he dropped off again, and he’s been out like a light since. You know, how he just—switches off like that?”

Peggy nods. “I know.” It’s past six now, and she’s willing to gamble Barnes didn’t leave for lunch either. With their captain recovering and no solid intelligence for the next mission yet, the Commandos are on leave for the next day, at least, so other men have been haunting their usual favorite pub. Barnes has never quite been one of their gang, though. There’s loyalty for him, but not intimacy.

“Have you eaten?” Peggy asks. “I know quite a nice place for a hot supper, and you ought to keep your strength up.” When did she become her mother, she wonders.

“Well,” Barnes says. He puts his hand on Steve’s bedsheets, but Steve is still as fast asleep as ever. She knows he’s not immune to her own smile, the narrow of her waist and width of her hips. “Could be fun,” he says at last. “We’re on leave, after all, right?” His smile—the smile she’s seen him give to Steve so many times—sort of awakens, and it changes him entirely. He has a kind face when he’s not half-lost in his thoughts.

“Right,” Peggy says, returning the smile.

“Guess I could use something to eat, too, now you say it." He stands up, leaves the book on his chair with a scrap of newspaper tucked in it as a bookmark, and puts on his jacket. "Lead the way, then, Agent."

As they walk to the restaurant Peggy has in mind, Barnes gets better at holding up his own end of the conversation. “Now, what’s it worth to you to share some embarrassing stories about Steve from before I got back?” he asks. “I mean, how many guys did he punch in basic, round about?”

He’s saying _I know you’re Steve’s girl and I won’t step on anybody’s toes_. She likes him a little more for that, even though a small part of her is saying she’s not Steve’s girl, not really. The apple hasn’t been bitten yet, only yearned for. “Well, before I share any information, I suppose I’ll have to ask what you have to trade,” is her riposte. “Childhood stories, perhaps?”

Barnes laughs. “Oh, boy. Where do I start? I could tell you about the iceman’s horse, back when we were in sixth grade.”

“I’ll take that one, and let me tell _you_ about Steve and the grenade,” she says, because it’s one of her favorite stories about Steve. Like all the best ones, it makes her heart hurt with something there isn’t a word for—the way Steve threw himself on that grenade without even a thought, or the way he made a joke just before Erskine’s green coffin closed around him.

 _“Grenade_?” Barnes says. He makes a little noise in his throat and shakes his head. At least someone else understands.

Fortunately, it’s far enough into the summer that they’ll have light past eight o’clock, so there’s no need to hurry or fret over the blackout. In fact, Sergeant Barnes is much easier company than Peggy had expected, and she finds herself handing back her menu to a waitress in almost no time. Barnes, curious, orders the same Yorkshire puddings she orders, after extracting a promise that it really is not dessert.

After Peggy’s grenade story (which might earn Steve an earful when he wakes up, she admits) and Barnes’ iceman story (oh, poor young Steve and his urge to protect a horse that must have weighed as much as twenty of him), the food arrives, and then Barnes is saying: “It’s because of his Judgment card, I think. Always wanting to stand up for everything."

Then he pauses for a moment—the first moment they’ve fallen out of the comfortable rhythm they found before they left the hospital. Barnes’ cheeks go a little pink, and his fork hovers.

“It’s all right,” Peggy says. “Steve’s quite open about his card; it’s no secret.” It was clearly always a point of pride for him, the Judgment card, and one that he didn’t cease to be proud of even after becoming Captain America.

"He's always told everyone," Bucky says, the tension in his shoulders easing. “Well, anyway, I think all that standing up to bullies and getting punched comes from Judgment. He's right, being proud of it, though,” he adds quickly, as though Peggy would think he thought any different. “Means a lot of gu—bravery, and character.”

Peggy sips her tea. “I think so too,” she says, honestly. “You know they say Churchill has Judgment. And your Mr. Roosevelt, too. Reviving their nations from war, standing up to the Axis, and so on.” These kind of things—people’s cards, people’s love lives—aren’t usually publicly discussed, but somehow or other the citizenry usually seems to think they know all about both.

“I always heard Roosevelt has Justice,” Barnes says thoughtfully. “I guess they’re pretty similar, though.”

This is something Peggy happens to have considered before. “I suppose they are. They both reflect the idea of choosing justice or being committed to a just outcome. But I think that Justice is an ongoing process: the day-to-day commitment to justice. It’s a more practical card; it requires responsibility and an acceptance of consequences, wanted or unwanted. On the other hand, Judgment is perhaps more . . . emotional, more exceptional, more idealistic. I think of it as indicating those great moments where a trumpet sounds to call us to life or to battle. You can’t be reborn every day, after all. I see it as the difference between fighting for what's  _fair_ and what's  _right_."

“Huh. Fair and right. I gotta think about that part.” Barnes contemplates what she’s said as drinks his tea (“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” he’d said playfully). Eventually, he says, “But I guess your Churchill and our F.D.R. would both be Justice, then. That New Deal was no one big dramatic moment, but it worked in the end. And the same for all of your rationing and ‘Dig for Victory.’”

“Well, yes, perhaps you're right,” Peggy says, pleased. It’s quite a surprise to find out that Barnes is fun to talk to, when he wants to be. It’s been so long since she had a real conversation with anyone other than Howard, and Barnes has just as sharp a mind but is far better at actually listening to what she has to say.  His dry sense of humor is appealing, too, and it’s easy to be drawn into the game of verbal sparring with him. Now she understands why Steve and Barnes rib one another so constantly; they’ve probably been doing it all their lives.

 “And so, on the other side, you’re saying Judgment really means having no common sense. Which sounds about right.”

“You’re relentless,” she says, amused. She’s never known insults to carry so much affection. “But it isn’t slander if it’s true. I suppose that’s why he has us.” She give in to the compulsion to add: “Actually, Justice is my card.”

“Oh.” Barnes’ eyebrows raise. “Well, I’m impressed,” he says. “It’s a real nice card. Makes you and Steve—you got a lot in common.” He smiles, but it’s not a real smile any more. From him, she’d rather have had the insult than the compliment.

“I suppose it says I should resign myself to a life outside the glow of glory,” she says instead, trying to revive the rapport they had before. “Although perhaps, in our modern era, we shouldn’t place so much emphasis on our cards after all.”

“They’ve always seemed pretty accurate to me,” Barnes says softly, his voice a little rough. As though he’s one of those trick images that’s two pictures in one, in the blink of an eye the Barnes she’s just met is gone. Was the sheen of sweat on his forehead always there?

They end the meal by talking about the weather, and then Barnes thanks her again for the invitation and walks her back down to the Underground and to the secret entrance to HQ (a hidden door in a Left Luggage storage room). Then, he leaves again; he’s going back to the hospital. He promises to tell Steve about the grenade story as soon as Steve wakes up.

HQ is nearly empty at this time of the evening, most of its occupants still out carousing up in London in the real world. Peggy’s room is somewhat secluded, anyway, being as it is near the WACs’ quarters and far away from any of the men’s quarters or the labs.

She’s tired, though. Steve is still injured and sleeping, and it’s late enough, so she changes into her pajamas and sits cross-legged on her bad.

She didn’t mean what she said about cards in the modern era. Actually, she keeps a deck of them with her always. In her opinion, they’re an overlooked tool of spycraft, since card choice is an excellent identifier (it’s difficult to fake selecting the right card from someone else’s deck) and a person’s card provides a quick insight into his or her personality or motivation (as long as the interpreter has enough understanding of cards to interpret thoughtfully—which she does).

As they’re on her mind, she sorts through them, shuffles them idly, and finds that she’s thinking of Barnes. Is he trying to stifle jealousy of Steve—or of _her_?

She shuffles the cards again, then pulls one out at random. Justice, astonishingly. Is Barnes Justice? No, he isn’t. He’s not Judgment either. If he were either of those, he wouldn’t have hated to know that Peggy was one of them too.

Peggy fans out all of the remaining 21 cards face-up on her bedspread, takes out Judgment too, and then discards both Justice and Judgment in a separate pile.

She looks at the rest.

Is Barnes the Magician, like many marksmen? No, she doesn’t think so. He sees his talent as a tool, nothing more. She removes the Magician.

Howard is Death; somehow, everyone knows that. You could consider Barnes’ imprisonment a “death,” but no, Barnes isn’t the kind of man who leaves the past behind. He’s the kind of man who refuses to let it go. Death gets discarded.

Dr. Erskine was the Fool; very few people know that. She suspects it’s one reason nobody can replicate his serum: they’re all Magicians, scientists who are trying to analyze its mechanisms. But she’s always believed the serum wasn’t a matter of will and hard work: it was a matter of faith, trust, idealism, potential, and the wise foolishness that suggested Steve was just the right choice. They wouldn’t have given the serum to Erskine’s “little guy,” the 4-F man, and they’ll never replicate it, not in a thousand years.

The Fool isn’t Barnes either, though. She takes it out.

Peggy works through the Major Arcana more and more methodically, sorting through them and eliminating the cards that don’t fit. It’s a little invasive to do this to a friend, she realizes, but she also could just look through the files and find the certain answer in Barnes’ records. She’s choosing not to abuse that privilege.

She comes down to two remaining.

The Hanged Man. Barnes chooses to fight, but doesn’t want to fight. A paradox of sorts, suspended action, sacrifice. Perhaps. But the Hanged Man is about letting go and surrendering oneself, and that doesn’t seem to fit. He seems like the kind of man who _won't_ let go.

So Peggy puts aside the Hanged Man, leaving only one left.

Now that she’s looking at it by itself, it couldn’t be more obvious. This is Barnes’ card: enduring partnership, uncertainty, a moral choice, all the delight and hardship and hard work that goes into love. The Lovers. A much rarer card than one might think, but a lovely one, especially for a charming man like Barnes, because it means he’s charming without being a cad.

In literature, the Lovers is the card of Odysseus’ Penelope, of Hector’s Andromache, of both Eros and his Psyche, of Hamlet’s Horatio and Brutus’ Portia in Shakespeare, but not of Romeo and Juliet—this card has nothing to do with a fleeting attraction. In fact, most fictional lovers don’t have the Lovers; the only ones Peggy can recall are _Pride and Prejudice_ ’s Jane and Bingley, partners both to one another and to their dear friends. Of all King Arthur’s knights, Sir Gawain, who chose to let his Lady Ragnell choose, is the only one said to have the Lovers—not Lancelot and Guinevere, not Tristan or Isolde.

Beyond literature, cards are a more private thing, but Marie and Pierre Curie, partners throughout life, confirmed that they both had the Lovers, and then Queen Victoria’s beloved Prince Albert is one of the most famous Lovers in history. According to rumor, Britain’s reigning George IV, who was never meant to have the crown but chose to bear it, has the Lovers too.

If Barnes has the Lovers, she knows what his choice must be. She was right: he’ll stay at war as long as Steve is here, no matter how much he longs to leave. It doesn’t matter in the end what kind of love Barnes has for Steve—although it’s not difficult to guess—because Peggy’s stealing Steve one way or another. She sees that now.

Oh, Steve, she thinks. Steve must have no idea, but he’s always so helpless in dealing with the feeling between himself and her, let alone anything less perfectly clear than that (and she’s been as clear about her affections as anyone could possibly be). Does Steve love Barnes? Does he know enough to even ask himself the question? How can she say? The card doesn’t. And the war doesn’t leave many opportunities for working these things out.

Peggy looks at the card for a moment longer, then methodically changes back out of her pajamas and into her street clothes. She takes her things, her bag with a gun and a book, and leaves HQ again.

She prays for no air raids and goes back out. Foolish, but she’s made the decision to be foolish. She’ll accept the consequences, if there are any. Thank god there’s at least still a little light in the sky; that’s the benefit of the summer months at London’s latitude. Anyway, she knows the route to the hospital well, and it’s close, so it doesn’t take her long at all to show her SSR ID and get back into Steve’s ward.

It’s dark now, of course, especially with the windows fully blacked-out. But the rows of beds are illuminated enough for safety’s sake, enough to show the men staring at her (a woman!) as she enters and Barnes still sitting by Steve’s bedside, with the book in his hands. The title happens to be facing her now: it’s _A Tale of Two Cities_. Not what she might have expected. But she wonders what he’s thinking of in it now, as he holds it like a totem. Recalling to life, or the guillotine?

Steve, in his turn, is exactly as he was before. Even the lock of hair on his forehead hasn’t stirred, although the black eye he had this morning is gone. He’s still peacefully, frustratingly aloof from all the turmoil of Peggy’s life, most of which is of his causing.

Quietly, Peggy finds an unused chair and carries it over. It’s not until she actually puts it next to Barnes that he starts and says, “Agent Carter?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she says, sitting on the chair and taking her tiny-print compendium of Shakespeare’s histories from her bag.

“You know they’re gonna kick you out,” Barnes says, almost as a question. He knows better than to tell her she shouldn’t walk around alone at night.

“They’ll have to kick us both out,” she says. They might have a chance if someone has a soft spot for Captain America and doesn’t mind making an exception, but she expects to be expelled sooner or later.

Barnes just shakes his head, but his exasperation is mostly put on. “Suit yourself,” he says.

If Barnes does have the Lovers, he shouldn’t be alone. He must be starving for closeness. And Steve needs Barnes, too, perhaps even more than he knows he does, and Peggy can get damn lonely too as the only female officer in a secret military base underneath London. It’s war, and there isn’t time for anything like love, and Steve is awful with love, anyway, but they can have this.

She leaves the book on her lap, but doesn’t even bother opening it.  Next to her, Barnes is settling back into his sniper stillness—because of course that’s what it is, and of course he’s watching Steve as he always does, whether it’s here or up on a mountain. The book is just a prop.

Soon, Barnes’ breathing ebbs so slow and deep he sounds as though he’s asleep as well. It’s soporific, the sound of Barnes’ breathing and the stillness he exudes, making Peggy start to yawn even though it’s not that late yet. If she leans a little against him for support, though, and he ends up leaning back, it isn’t the end of the world. He’s a Lover who loves Steve, the best of men; she can safely close her eyes by his side.

Justice, she thinks. Making sure everyone gets what they deserve.

  

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment with your thoughts!! It's the comments that keep me writing. So if you want to read more, you know what to do! And if you like enough to bookmark, I'd like to see your comment too.
> 
> Feel free to also leave comments asking about or discussing tarot card things regarding whatever character. I find it interesting to talk about! I know I originally said Peggy was the Magician, but after thinking it over I think she has to be Justice. As a founder of SHIELD, I think that reflects her better. I might expand on it more in another fic.
> 
> People have seemed interested in using this tarot card AU concept for their own fic. If that's you, ask me about it in the comments. I'm not giving blanket permission (because I want to get to do some things myself), but I'll likely say yes, so just ask!
> 
> Edit: Realized I didn't give credit for the title. It's from this verse of Christina Rossetti's poem "Bride Song":
> 
> "Too late for love, too late for joy,  
> Too late, too late!  
> You loitered on the road too long,  
> You trifled at the gate:  
> The enchanted dove upon her branch  
> Died without a mate;  
> The enchanted princess in her tower  
> Slept, died, behind the grate;  
> Her heart was starving all this while  
> You made it wait."


End file.
